Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi killers, became an Australian citizen 3 years ago. His deed was "his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship." He took 5 bullets, and fears he'll lose his left arm. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

It's time has finally come

We are horrified and shaken in the wake of the mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Bondi this evening, which has left at least ten people dead and injured many more. This is the first night of Chanukah when we gather with loved ones and friends to light the Chanukiah. 1/4

Great to get this new research out. We find that following cuts to non-health benefit income cause more people to claim disability benefits.

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

incredible quote lol

the distinguishing characteristic is that under some circumstances it makes sense to take risks not that have high volatility compensated by high expected value, but risks that have negative expected value compensated by long right tails, ie the “risk” compensates expected loss. 2/

Great thread here - higher moments/long tails matter a lot for risk-taking behaviour!

I'm near speechless at this framing of overall immigration falling by, like, 60%

“Bearing down on the cost of living” latest:

I didn't have high hopes for the Labour government but I thought getting rid of the Tories would put an end to the full-on intentional destruction stuff; it's all been very disappointing

STATEMENT MADE.

I found 2024 incredibly frustrating. Because I (and lots of other people) kept explaining that the fiscal position of all parties was literally impossible but broadcast (in particular) was never willing to go that far.

After more than 10 years of “the Danish Model”, nativism is hegemonic in the country, the far right polls near level highs again, and the Social Democrats lost Copenhagen and poll at historic low. European Social Democrats should look at the facts, not the myths! Me in @theguardian.com

This focuses on politics. But we should also care about *outcomes*. In the UK, migrants (both from EU and elsewhere) are more likely to have a job than the UK born. In Denmark, there's a gap of 15-20%. Similarly for education outcomes. Why would we want to copy that?

Rachel Reeves has finally identified the problem with the UK economy - everything is too cheap and affordable.

Yeah, as much as I loathe him and he indulged far too much round the edges, Sunak did enforce boundaries on this, as did Starmer on opposition, it's only this year that Starmer drifts into what Stephen Bush rightly calls a "Trappist" approach to bigotry that the right have been able to move things.

As soon as politicians stop enforcing norms things can unravel very, very quickly. Currently the Starmer legacy based off the last six months of total capitulation and ceding of ground, bar one decent speech in September.

Fundamentally, the UK is a massive success story on integration and most of the anxiety around it from the right should be treated as in insincere concern trolling it actually is.

Are you listening @sarahsackman.bsky.social?

We're clear: the Government's proposed asylum reforms will only entrench division and cause serious harm. People who need the UK's protection deserve so much better. hiasjcore.org/statements/s...

Labour peer Lord Dubs: "To use children as a weapon, as the home secretary is doing, is I think a shabby thing. I’m lost for words, frankly." www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour...

The Danish Social Democrats are currently on course for their worst election result since at least the Second World War, despite their brand of far-right accommodationism being touted as a blueprint for other centre-left parties.

When do employers share? Rent sharing, monopsony and minimum wages By Ihsaan Bassier and Joshua Budlender Read at: ow.ly/6XA350XreWb

Labour’s core voter is a Londoner. While they fret about imagined Reform defecting voters in the “red wall” they’re at risk of losing their 21st century heartland entirely. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-l...

The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform. Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right. I questioned the Home Secretary on how she can be proposing such obviously cruel policies.

The cruelty is the point. Shameful.

I think the public have this one right. While accepting the complexity of all of these policy areas, politics as performance more than debate is clearly failing.

Yesterday, we put out a report on the most important issues to voters. We know that immigration now tops the traditional most important issues question (see below from @yougov.co.uk). But that doesn't tell the full story. Here is a rundown of the experiments we did to test this out (A THREAD):

I finally resigned my membership of the Labour Party today. This is what I wrote to my MP @meghillier.bsky.social on why, as a British Jew, I could no longer be part of it.

Doesn’t matter. “Starmer and Mahmood wanted to take jewellery from asylum seekers” is a mark those two will never be able to wash off and which the party as a whole will have to put in onerous work to remove.

The Prime Minister said in September that we are at a fork in the road. These asylum proposals suggest we have taken the wrong turning. The idea that recognised refugees need to be deported is wrong. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Both the Budget and the asylum bill are disintegrating before they've even been formally announced. Absolutely dead government.

One of the biggest problems with the "means testing of everything" is it pushes the UK into the same zone as American attitudes towards public transit funding "services for the poor tend to be poor services" You may not like it, but people like to see they get something back from the state

Stories on BBC News - a street brawl which helpfully tells us those involved were “of Turkish origin” and another about a sex offender “Sudanese” but an extremely prolific sex offender responsible for 343 offences is not described as “white British” why is that

Where should Britain build 1.5 million homes? @amritakulka.bsky.social l and I analysed 20 billion housing searches + availability to map demand at a hyper-local level. Map 👉 wheretobuild.warwick.ac.uk Full + 350 LA reports 👉 www.warwick.ac.uk/cage/whereto... @cagewarwick.bsky.social 1/n

“Nobody thought a Labour government would have to raise taxes by more than £70bn,” claims one insider in this excellent piece. Shows the problem of the climate of fear in meetings created by some of Starmer’s aides, in that plenty of Labour insiders, did, in fact, think this!

We are going to live in a world where the the marginal cost of electricity is very close to zero

Lovely interview with Anthony Barnett www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

The IFS has calculated that the effective carbon price on household use of gas is negative, thanks to its lower VAT rate. ifs.org.uk/articles/tax.... This obviously sets back the carbon transition. Let's hope the Government is looking to make this better!

Interesting that the judge notes that it is a "political belief" Robinson holds and then proceeds to call it a "protected characteristic". Even though political beliefs are not in fact protected characteristics under the Equality Act – only philosophical ones are. Somewhat gives the game away.

big, multicultural cities - they're good!

I’m sure Matt Goodwin will be along shortly to tell us all whether LNER Customer Service Host Samir Zitouni counts as British or not. news.sky.com/story/train-...

spread Samir Zitouni’s name far and wide

How does employer access to prisoners’ labor through work release impact the well-being of those workers & of free workers? New working paper by Sue Helper, Suresh Naidu, Akseli Palomaki, Adam Reich, + me provides evidence, focus on auto manufacturing in AL #EconSky papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

New report! TLDR - Official statistics have been majorly overstating the number of self-employed workers for decades. Using new data we find not only have the true numbers been much lower, but rather than rising since 2000, the rise in self-employment was mostly post-financial crisis. 1/3

NEW: New data show that official statistics have overcounted the number of self-employed workers in the UK for decades. @helenmiller.bsky.social, Isaac Delestre, Kate Smith and @bojs.bsky.social’s new report uses newly available data to fill the gap in the statistical record: